Derrick Penner
Sun
The British Columbia Homeowner Protection Office has cancelled the builder’s licence of CB Development (2000) Ltd., developer of the troubled Riverbend housing project.
That decision means that the company and its director nominee Grayden Hayward cannot be relicensed, and Hayward cannot serve as the director of an HPO-licensed firm for five years.
HPO chief executive officer Ken Cameron said in an interview that CB Development’s home-warranty insurance provider informed his office that it had discontinued its coverage, which made them “no longer qualified to be licensed.”
“The [homeowner protection] legislation provides that when a person has had their licence cancelled, they’re not able to be a director of a company seeking a licence for a period of five years,” Cameron said.
CB Development ran into trouble earlier this year when it cancelled the pre-sale contracts of 32 homebuyers in the final phase of its Riverbend project of 148 strata-titled single family homes, citing skyrocketing construction costs and a need to sell them at current market prices.
Seventeen of those 32 buyers sued CB Development, trying to get the company to turn over the homes. The company’s main construction lender foreclosed on the project, which put CB Development into receivership.
Hayward, in an interview, said he was expecting the HPO’s cancellation ever since CB Development was put into receivership.
When a company goes into receivership, that breaches its contract with its homeowner warranty insurance provider, Hayward explained, and it loses warranty coverage.
“The regulation is quite clear,” Hayward added. “If you don’t have warranty coverage, you can’t have an HPO licence.”
And as a result of that cancellation, Hayward said he has resigned as a director and president of Island West Development (2006) Ltd., a company that has proposed to build a 94-unit luxury waterfront resort in Ucluelet.